This post has absolutely NOTHING to do with EVs, the environment, global climate change or any of the usual subjects I explore. It’s about my favorite piece of technology, the Apple Macintosh.
My very first personal computer was an Apple ][+ I got as a Christmas gift in 1980. I had so wanted an IBM PC and was sorely disappointed. But then something amazing happened. I had been programming since a math class in the 7th grade, so I opened up the Apple’s programming manual and found all these routines that allowed me to create graphics programmatically! What a very cool feature. At the time, I was really into computer graphics and the work of early computer-graphic artists, so I dove right in.
With that first Apple computer, I created a Rubik’s Cube game. It took about 6 weeks at 4 hours a day, but I had a graphic of the six sides of the cube, unfolded. Any valid move could be made, including rotating the entire cube to a new orientation. It could automatically determine if you’d correctly solved the cube. You could randomly shuffle the cube or save it to work on it later. If you wanted to, you could give up and the computer would solve the cube for you, printing in English at the bottom of the screen, each move as it was being made.
I was in love. THIS is what computing was going to be about in my life. At about this same time, I became a professional programmer in a manufacturing facility. I programmed large metal-working machines like mills and lathes. The only exposure to graphics I got doing that, was the tool cutter verification plots.
Then, on this day, thirty years ago, Steve Jobs unzipped a carrying case and extracted a new type of computer: the Macintosh. Rather than typing arcane commands on a command line, the Macintosh used a pointer or cursor, driven by a mouse, to interact with the computer. To introduce the world to the Mac, Apple commissioned my favorite commercial, directed by Ridley Scott.
After a while, I moved up to Macintosh. I have owned:
- Quadra 660AV
- Quadra 840AV
- A PowerComputing Macintosh clone
- A Mac Cube
- A G4 Powermac
- iPod nano
- a 27″ iMac (quad-core)
- a 21.5″ iMac
- every model of iPhone (except the 5C. My youngest daughter has one of those.
- The first and third generation iPads
- Three Apple TVs
What Apple, Steve Jobs and the Macs have meant for me is hard to overstate. I have created three-dimensional landscape art, using KPT Bryce,
designed stained glass windows, using Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and, more recently, Pixelmator. I’ve done basic video editing and a lot of work I used to do in a darkroom, on my Macs. Communicating with others, while driving my Chevrolet Volt, is all voice-command driven and much safer than traditional mobile phone use (whaddya know, I found a way to work an EV into this post…)
Quite honestly, my Macs have freed the artist within me.
Now, I use them to write blog posts to share with you. My Mac has given me my voice.
